


The Climb

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Finding You Can Change [2]
Category: Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Angst, Awkward Crush, Body Horror, Character Study, Coming of Age, Daedra Worship, Daggerfall, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Heroes to Villains, Magic, Necromancy, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-20 23:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17631419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: There is a pattern to his life - or unlife, he supposes. A recurring variation of the same motif.And that motif is a climb.The dark and dramatic journey of Angof the Grave-Singer, from wide-eyed Reachman boy to loathsome necromancer to repentant villain (who just might be developing feelings on the Vestige who gave him a second chance).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of Umtaz's dedicated series because Durgakh the Vestige is Umtaz's ancestor.

There is a pattern to his life - or unlife, he supposes. A recurring variation of the same motif.  
  
And that motif is a climb.  
  
***  
  
His very first climb, he braves when he is still a boy, small and narrow-chested, his stick-like legs bare below the knee, flashing through the grass, white save for the occasional pink blotches of nettle stings. Which he does not mind, not one bit - who do you think he is, a crybaby? Let these pesky plants burn at his skin; let the shrub branches slap and scratch at him; let the burrs latch on to the hem of his dear pelt vest, a bit too loose for his scrawny shoulders. All that he does is to keep ploughing his way up, drawing a deep gulley in his wake - like a scar carved into the green flesh of the hillside. Except that it heals a brief while later, when the grass he has trampled straightens up.  
  
On and on he climbs, with his wispy eyebrows knotted in concentration and casting a little shadow over his eager blue eyes, which are focused, almost without blinking, on his ultimate goal. The summit.  
  
He is not just trudging towards it out of a thirst for achievement - though this _is_ the tallest hill in the vicinity of his clan's encampment, and no other children his age have attempted to scale it, and it will be awfully nice to become known as someone like "Angof the Explorer" instead of "Little Angof"... But that will just be an extra treat: the main thing he wants is to savour the view that is bound to open once he is there, on the tippity top.  
  
He has been completely unable to resist new sights and sounds, new facets of the nature around him, ever since he was a clumsy toddler, waddling off to prod at fallen logs and gape at the tall trees and track down leaping frogs, with such persistence that the grown-ups had to put up the dome of a spell shield over his head him to keep him from wandering too far. Thankfully (he is still kind of bad at reciting the names of the Old Gods he has to thank, but he does try), he is now too big for a spell shield crib - and so the hill beckons him. He will be able to see quite far from a place so high up, right?  
  
Right! When he, at long last, gets to the top, and swivels his round, messy-haired head from side to side (not forgetting to stick his tongue out triumphantly at the bothersome brambles he's left behind), his heart swells in his chest at the scene that unfolds before him.  
  
It is even more amazing than he expected: all these rows of fuzzy tree tops, the furthest blurred by smudges of blue mist, and the sky overhead, so clear and bright that it hurts his eyes a little to look at it for so long... And on the very horizon, the outlines of the stone towers, guarding that place he has heard the grown-ups talk about but never before gotten to see.  
  
Daggerfall.  
  
Imagine that, he can see Daggerfall from here! The great big city itself! The... place where "his kind" is not allowed.  
  
His stomach knots into a tight lump and clenches again, prodded by a bitter pang, while his soaring heart deflates like a punctured goat bladder (oh, the grown-ups use a lot of those in their "very important rituals") and plops to the bottom of his chest. For he has recalled what exactly his elders mutter among themselves whenever they mention Daggerfall.  
  
That huge stone maze, with its outlandish roofed houses and these odd places called "stores", where people barter for the things they need with round bits of yellow metal, has been built by the Bretons. That folk is supposed to be related to Angof's people, the Reachmen, but they could not be more different.  
  
The grown-ups say that the Bretons have forgotten about the Old Gods, and look down on all who still remember, shunning them as if they were sick.  
  
The grown-ups say that the Bretons are "cor-rupt" and greedy, ready to do anything, even hurt and kill each other, just to hoard as much yellow metal as possible.  
  
The grown-ups say that much of Glenumbra, the land where the Bretons now live and where Daggerfall is the "cap-it-all", used to belong to the Reachmen - but their clans have been tossed out of their own home, forced to feel like strangers among the woods and the hills and the rivers that once spoke to them in the "tongue of the old magic".  
  
The grown-ups say a lot of things. But they hardly ever go beyond that. They hardly ever do anything. Just sit round the fire and grumble and shove their hands deep into the innards of the "sack-ruff-eeshel" goat and read another ill omen for the children of the Reach.  
  
But that will not do, will it? What if there is a way... To make the Bretons stop crooning over their metal, once and for all; to make them think better, kinder thoughts; to make them understand that the Reachmen would like to return to their real home again?  
  
The boy called Angof - Little Angof for now, but soon to be Angof the Explorer if he can help it - squints in the dazzling summer light, and peers at the distant city walls again. And in his gaze, there is far more than mere childish curiosity.  
  



	2. Chapter 2

The time for his second big climb comes much, much later. By then, many years have passed since he was a carefree boy gawking at the towers in the mist.  
  
His awkward, bony body has filled out into a lithe form that some of the men and women in his clan would consider attractive (which he does not mind at all, though his duties to his kin come first). His unruly brown hair has been shaved save for a spiky mohawk, and a thread-like braid along the side of his face. His cheekbones and chin have been traced with the ritual swirls of ink... But the most drastic difference from his younger self is that the spark in his pale-blue eyes has all but faded, extinguished by the touch of weariness and perpetual concern.  
  
For upon reaching manhood, he has had little time to indulge his bubbly inquisitiveness: he is Angof the Bright now, a Reachman spellcaster, and his hands barely rest, with his fingers almost constantly alight with soothing golden glow, which he pours carefully into the wounds of his kin in the small, goat-skull-topped tent, one of the many that the clan has readied to shelter those in need.  
  
The gift of spell-weaving is widespread among Reachmen, who foster it since childhood - but some injuries are too grave for a single man or woman to treat without the help of a friendly mage.  
  
Some have been beaten up by the burly, badly shaven ruffians hired by a Breton baron, for "poaching" in the very forest where their forefathers freely hunted and made offerings to their gods.  
  
Some have had the strength to fight back, which has resulted in them being put in the stocks for several endless, excruciating days, in sweltering heat without food or water - so now they are nigh on crawling back to the clan, drained into pallid, wobbly-legged husks.  
  
And some are struggling to quell the bleeding out of the sword wounds that they sustained when confronting the Bretons about maiming, or even murdering, an elderly father, or a vulnerable child, or any other loved one of theirs; their loss clouding their mind like red smoke, they have tried to rip a bloody swathe through the cruel cities of stone, but all of their fervour has barely amounted to anything. For as long as the Bretons think the way they do, and look upon the world the way they do, there will always be more of them. Striking back. Pushing down. And not at the Reachmen alone.  
  
For a few of the people who come for healing are commoners from Glenumbra's towns and villages - welcomed as dear guests by Angof (who even tries to learn Common to talk to them, though he can never get the accent right) and, upon his insistence, the other mages of his clan. They never linger among the "wild forest men's" tents, setting out to look for a better lot in life as soon as their injuries have been seen to. Must be because they don't appreciate the beast skull motifs of the traditional ornaments, or the contents of the wise women's cauldrons. And the clan members are not at all distraught to watch them go, scoffing at Angof when he sees them off.  
  
"They are Bretons, remember?" they remind him, their teeth clenching, and their eyes flashing on their inked faces. "They are not kin to the Reach! And those who are not kin do not deserve our mercy!"  
  
But Angof only shakes his head, with a quiet smile. These people are Bretons, true - but not of the corrupt, metal-coveting sort that rules the cities.  
  
A runaway serf, who looks more like a rake with a beard than a person, and has taken to the woods out of desperation, for even years upon years of ceaseless toil were not enough to settle his debt to the landowner.  
  
A freckled young girl with a tear-streaked round face, who was claimed as a plaything by a knight who supposedly "protects" her village, and discarded when he no longer found her company entertaining - and whom a Reachman hunter stumbled upon in the marshes and pulled from the brink of a sloshing, inky-black bog hole, as she was considering putting her life to an end.  
  
A haggard, dazed apprentice mage in a ragged robe that is caked with mud along the fraying hem and speckled with blood across the upper torso; Angof does not know what to call them, for they are unable to introduce themself, as, according to the memories the clan's wise women read in their mind, with the help of some incense and a dollop of sacrificial blood, they uncovered a heinous political plot by their mentor and had their tongue cut out before they could report to the king's men (they would have been killed, too, if they had not run).  
  
Angof makes certain that the Reachmen and the outsiders alike are taken care of - and as he walks among them and lights his spells and learns their stories, that old familiar bitterness churns within his chest and stomach again, hardening into barbs that sink tighter into him than all the burrs he used to gather on his clothes when he traipsed over the hills as a child.  
  
And at some point, the painful pull of these barbs makes him recollect the questions he once asked himself when gazing upon Daggerfall's skyline.  
  
What can he do so that no-one else has to suffer? How can he slap the cruelty out of those city-dwellers' hearts and minds?  
  
The questions make him itch with their nettle sting, until finally, one night, padding the soles of his feet with the blue wisps of a muffling spell, he creeps into a small, damp cave a little way to the side of the clan's main encampment. And as he steps cautiously across its threshold, his blue eyes spark anew: being in the cave unsettles him, but he is determined not to come out of it empty-handed.  
  
This murky, draughty place, with bundles of herbs and dried-up animal limbs hanging from the ceiling, and with complex patterns of circles and triangles traced on the walls with goat blood, and with soul gems perched on rocky ledges and pulsing with a faint purple light that casts grotesque overstretched shadows, and with stacks of thick tomes in worn-through covers wobbling in the middle of the floor, is the dwelling of the oldest of the clan's wise women, whom even the most ferocious warriors would prefer not to bother without good cause. Some time ago, she underwent the sacred ritual that made dark-grey feathers sprout of her skin, giving her arms the semblance of crow wings, and stretched her fingers and toes into mighty, steel-like claws, and enhanced her vision to an inhuman degree, as the whites of her eyes were swallowed up by all-absorbing blackness.  
  
Her new form, hideous in the eyes of outsiders but inspiring reverence among the Reachmen, is called a hagraven. And Angof knows that hagravens are keepers of the deepest, most arcane magical lore: precisely what he needs right now. For how else, if not by arcane magic, would Glenumbra's nobles be compelled to change, to stop being so heartless both towards the Reachmen and their own brothers and sisters?  
  
He also knows that hagravens do not part with their secrets kindly, so he opts for stealth rather than asking the wise woman directly.  
  
Robbing such a being is no mean feat, and Angof loses count of the times when his chest fills to the brim with icy cold and he loses feeling in his hands and feet, because he thinks he can hear the hagraven stir on the opposite side of the cave, in that huge, messy nest she has whipped her fur and straw bedding into.  
  
Apparently, as a side effect of her transformation, she likes to sleep (if hagravens ever do sleep properly) while cuddling various shiny objects, which summoned crows bring her from the homes of metal-loving Bretons. And whenever one of these knickknacks - a polished tray or an ornate tankard or a glinting silver candlestick - rattles in the nest as the hagraven tosses and turns and mumbles to herself, Angof freezes in mid-step, a torrent of cold sweat rushing down his spine, while his whole life flashes blindingly before his eyes; and it seems to him that the muffling aura of his spell is the only thing that keeps the thunderous beating of his heart from waking the whole camp.  
  
Torn as he is by the fear of being discovered, he grabs the very first of the hagraven's books that comes within his view, and, after balancing the rest of the unsteady stack with a hastily cast, flickering telekinetic spell, makes off with it into the night.  
  
Rather than return to camp, he bolts in the opposite direction, his scurrying figure vanishing in the fog that brews in the darkened grove beyond the hagraven's cave. Cutting through the soft, billowing wisps, he makes it to a secluded shady clearing and, panting, throws himself onto the hard, slightly moist ground, clutching the stolen tome to his chest. It is just an illusion, of course, a trick played on him by his own over-exerted body - but he can almost swear that his jerking heartbeat is echoed within the book; that it answers to his pulse with that of its own. Hot. Pounding. Urgent.  
  
Inhaling forcefully, Angof straightens into a sitting pose, shifting a little on the grove's dewy floor so that his back can rest against a tree trunk. The ridges of the bark press at him through the cloth of his robe, and the nocturnal chill nips at his skin, but he does not mind this one bit, like he did not mind the prickles of the undergrowth during his boyish explorations. Having settled as comfortably as he can, he snaps his fingers to kindle a spark of mage light, and throws the book open in his lap.  
  
It turns out that he has snatched a grimoire on communing with one of the Daedric Princes. Mighty lords of the otherworldly realms of Oblivion, where the mundane laws of reason and logic do not apply. Masters of destruction and chaos. Commanders of voracious hordes of deformed creatures with spiky tails and sharp horns and webbed wings and dripping fangs. And great lovers of elaborate games where mortal minds are like cards in a deck, shuffled around and flipped over and even ripped in half if the player gets too annoyed.  
  
The Reachmen have few reservations about diving into the wellspring of Daedric power, believing that the art of summoning is not morally wrong, and just has to be used with caution. Like a staff has to be used with caution, lest you accidentally smack yourself in the face. Still, beginner summoners are warned against putting blind trust into Daedric Princes, for their bargains have a second layer to them, and sometimes a third and a fourth, each more twisted than the next.  
  
But he knows what he is doing. He can see his mission clearly now: a brighter future for Glenumbra, brought about in single powerful sweep of mind-altering magic. If he focuses on that, if he does not lose sight of what he wants, the way he did when he was a boy, he will never fall for a Daedric Prince's bargain. He will never allow himself to be played with. They do not call him Angof the Bright for nothing!  
  
He spends all night leafing through the hagraven's book, studying the coiling black symbols scrawled over its brittle yellow pages, and moving his lips noiselessly to make sense of the elaborate incantations. When the dawn breaks, and the slanting streaks of pink and gold cleave the fog away, he gets up, tucks the tome close to his chest - where, again, it seems to acquire a heartbeat of its own - and leaves the grove to find a more or less well-tred path where he might come across a solitary traveller. Because... Because the grimoire says that he is going to, uh, need one. As payment to the Prince.  
  
This is going to get bloody - but he is a Reachman; spilling a few red droplets here and there to wake the spirits, and divining the future by the shape and colour of animal entrails is as normal in his clan as washing your face and hands in the morning. True, he wants to change the Bretons, not drown them in their own blood - but he can stomach a single ritual killing for the sake of the greater good. And he will take exceptional care to pick out a sacrifice from among those Bretons who lap up the honeyed glow of their metal as if it were Skooma, not caring how miserable everyone else is.  
  
And he thinks he does find such a Breton as he prowls the forest path, with his crouching figure half-concealed by tree trunks and his blue eyes flaring beneath a lowered hood. He spots him fairly quickly - a huge blob of a man in a silken coat, riding slowly on horseback, with two guards following his chubby, fluffy-legged paint steed on more modest chestnut mounts.  
  
Two guards, one spell. One shot of chain lightning, fired from behind a tree - just enough to burn a sticky charred circle in the leather-clad chest of the first target, and then leap over to the second, arching upwards and cooking both of the man's eyeballs into a treat that the hagraven back home would surely appreciate (he might have to bring her a snack like this, to make up for rifling through her belongings).  
  
Two guards, one spell, and not a single scream. Not a single prick of remorse to disrupt the speedy rhythm of Angof's heart, either. Well, really, these goons were probably of the sort that, as his clanmates say, does not deserve mercy - the sort to twist a person's limbs behind their back and force them to the ground with a hack of a blade below the knee, for not bowing to their master properly.  
  
And even if he does feel anything, it is all drowned out by the pounding echo that comes from the book as his heart thumps against it. This ever-mounting beat spurs him on, pushing him to leap onto the path before the sweating, bug-eyed, speechless Breton.  
  
Just as the man's horse reels in terror to its hind legs, Angof freezes both mount and rider with a crackling burst of elemental magic, scorchingly blue like the cold flame in his eyes. After that, it is but a matter of moments before he finds a foothold on the petrified Breton's rime-touched stirrup, hoists himself up over the horse's flank, and breaks through the crispy, brittle crust that the blobby wretch's clothes and flesh have turned into.  
  
Like a deer foraging for blotches of colourful moss underneath the winter snow, he digs deep into the Breton's chest, and clasps at his dark-red heart, which has not frozen through like the rest of the body, and is soft and smooth in his fist, washing his fingers over with liquid warmth.  
  
This is it. An offering worthy of a Daedric Prince. A fitting sacrifice to ensure a brighter future for Glenumbra.  
  
With the heart still squashed under his fingertips, which are glittering slightly with a sustained aura of frost magic to preserve it better, Angof gets off the horse (the poor fuzzy thing will probably thaw in a minute or so, and gallop off after the mounts of the two guards), and vanishes in the woods again, to make that second climb of his.  
  
This time, his ascent leads to the location he has memorized from an ink etching in the grimoire: the top of a sheer cliff that busts out of the woodland like the hilt of a knife out of a wound. There is no grass or lush shrubbery here, like on the summit where he gazed at Daggerfall; just dry, cracking rock under his feet, with brownish thorny vines breaking through here and there, and clawing at him much more viciously than any burrs or nettles.  
  
He tries to clear his way with magic, using his free hand to release a little flame bolt and turn the vines to grey puffs of ash - but it seems that waging war on these stubborn plants is like waging war on Bretons: while he is dealing with one, two or three more pop up, lacerating his calves with their thorns so that he soon begins to leave a trail that is much grizzlier, and much more lasting than footprints in the grass: a smear of crimson against the dark-grey rock. His own blood mixing in with the drip from the heart in his fist.  
  
His heart jolts a little when, already close to the summit, he looks back on the red path he's traced - and, like a stone cast into a pool, that jolt sends a ripple of pain first through his chest, and then down to his weary legs. But, his forehead creasing and his blue eyes narrowing, he compels himself to turn away and to concentrate on the goal ahead. The abandoned summoning circle, built out of tall, grim-looking standing stones. They crown the cliff like a grey jagged tiara, streaked with the veins of encroaching vines, which twist over the stones' weather-beaten surface, not disturbed for centuries by anyone who would care to weed them out.  
  
And in the centre of the circle, at the peak of Angof's climb, stands a stone altar, carved to depict a leering, skull-like face, with a mouth full of long, tightly packed, uneven teeth, which resemble both a beast's fangs and the pincers of a venomous insect. Two thick horns jut out over the skull's temples, curving forward; and below its chin, rests a deep offering bowl, where Angof places the heart, before retreating a couple of paces with a reverent bow, and taking out the grimoire again.  
  
As his hand has been generously caked over with drying blood, he inadvertently leaves four long red fingerprints on the precious tome's page - and is so startled by this, that the parchment seems to burn at his skin.  
  
Although... Wait - it does burn! The imprint of his bloodied hand does catch fire; it shoots out of the page in a cluster of weaving, serpentine tongues that dance along the edge, and sting at Angof, but miraculously, do not touch the parchment itself. Soon, the entire book is engulfed in an undying scarlet flame - and before he can process what has happened, it yanks itself violently out of his grasp, and hovers before his face, while the fire dances faster and faster, spitting out ruby sparks that cling together in mid-air, shaping the words Angof remembers reading in the nocturnal grove.  
  
And thus, he begins to repeat these words out loud, each guttural throb of the Daedric language scalding the back of his throat like hard liquor, so that by the end of the incantation, he feels quite drunk, floating off into nowhere, unable to figure out where his hands and feet are, or to remember what was that he promised himself... Something about... Focusing... Not losing sight of... Whatever it was.  
  
In the meanwhile, the sky above the hilltop grows overcast, even though elsewhere, it still shines a bright mid-day blue. The clouds bloat with dark waters, almost pinning their bulging underbelly onto the tips of the standing stones. Along their edges, they are inky black, touched by an occasional stroke of red that appears to reflect the colour of the grimoire's fiery glow; and towards the centre, they grow soul-gem-purple, with white zigzags of lightning breaking through every now and again.  
  
Like the facets of a gem with living essence trapped within, the shades of purple shift from dark to blindingly saturated, and then almost white - and these highlights, as Angof notices when some of his nauseating trance clears off, are positioned in the same way that the features of the stone skull are. A pair of eye sockets and slit-like nostrils, two rows of sharp fangs, and the smoky outline of the horns. In other words, the clouds have shaped themselves into an enormous, ghostly copy of the image on the altar - and one of the illustrations in the grimoire, which is now flapping its burning pages madly, with so much rustling that Angof can barely hear the sound of his own voice. Especially since his teeth are chattering, too, what with icy wind having begun to blow out of nowhere, tugging at his robes, and even powdering his shoulders with snowflakes (the vines around him, however, appear completely unaffected by the change of weather, resilient as any weed).  
  
"L-Lord Molag Bal?" Angof asks, his gut pierced by an invisible (but very forcefully hurled) javelin as he says the words out loud.  
  
A rumble of thunder stirs in the heart of the clouds, mounting in strength until Angof begins to discern separate words among its peels, spoken in a deep voice that sounds slightly warped, like the one that utters them is still separated from him by the waters of Oblivion.  
  
"I am but an aspect of him, mortal. A pale reflection of the true power wielded by the God of Schemes and Domination".  
  
The flow of the aspect's speech is interrupted by a low, frustrated growl.  
  
"The protection put in place by that insolent maggot you call Saint Alessia prevents me from walking freely in this realm. But that shall soon be rectified".  
  
Angof opens and closes his mouth, still groggy, and thoroughly a loss what the face in the clouds is hinting at. And the aspect of the Daedric Prince must have noticed his confusion, for the ghostly eyes grow narrower, and the sky quakes with a disdainful laugh.  
  
"You have been too short-sighted, little man," the voice says. "Not looking past your insignificant corner of the world. The greatest of plans is about to come to fruition - a grand conquest of the mortal plane by my armies. And you will have a part to play in the future war".  
  
It is at this point that Angof properly gets a hold of himself, and recalls why he has made this climb. He has plans of his own, thank you very much! And he will show everyone - Molag Bal, his clan, the whole of Glenumbra! - that he has the willpower to stare down a Daedric Prince and say "no" to him.  
  
Maybe this will even earn him a new moniker, "Angof the Bold" or something... It is not the main thing he wants - but it will be... well, a nice extra treat.  
  
"I did not come here to fight your war, Daedric Prince!" he cries out, his lungs burning with the effort of raising his voice, even as the wind blows stronger and stronger around him, sounding like a scream in his (slightly flushed) ears.  
  
"All I wanted to ask for... Was a fraction of your power to get rid of the corruption of Glenumbra, in exchange for an off..."  
  
"Do not insult me, little man!" the aspect of Molag Bal thunders, not letting him properly finish - and the indignant roar of the Daedra is like a crushing sweep of a wintry storm, which makes the scream in Angof's ear reach its shrill crescendo, and also almost knocks him off his feet, chilling him about just as thoroughly as that Breton he... sacrificed.  
  
"Do not insult me! Not when I am beginning to favour you! That 'offering' of yours was not a payment - I would demand a thousand more bleeding hearts to be satisfied! No, it was an..."  
  
The glowing mouth in the sky stretches into a jeering smile, and the wind dies down somewhat, to allow for a dramatic pause (is... is Molag Bal doing it on purpose?).  
  
"It was an introduction. A sign that you are a mortal who does not shy away from erasing lesser beings. That man you killed - I saw his life unfold, and never had I been more disgusted. Such pathetic weakness. Such a waste of wealth and influence on meaningless compassion. Sharing lavish dinners with the poor. Building orphanages for the mortal larvae. Rewarding healers for prolonging the life of the defective wretches that should have been allowed to rid the world of their whiny, useless selves. Never raising hand or voice; never asserting dominance. His very existence was an affront to me - and by removing him, you have poised yourself as a worthy candidate for being my servant".  
  
The air on the clifftop is quite still now. And bitterly frosty. Angof's breath escapes his lips in a groan-like puff of white vapour, while inside him, an invisible string stretches to an impossible point, and then snaps, with a burst of pain that brings tears to his glassy blue eyes.  
  
He... He killed a good man? An innocent man? He stalked a poor unsuspecting traveller as if he were a bloody deer - and then decided, without even getting to know him, judging by his appearance alone, that he did not deserve mercy? That the slimy, oozing chunk of flesh torn out of his chest would have more value than his entire life?  
  
And... His guards! What if they were not sadistic thugs, like Angof assumed? What if they were honourable men... with families... with loved ones?  
  
Oh no. No, no, no! He should never have been so hasty! He should have stopped and realized he was making a mistake!  
  
"By the gods," he whispers, nausea overpowering him once more, and peers past the hovering grimoire at the offering bowl with the heart. "I am a monster".  
  
A new bout of thunder rolls across the darkened heavens. Molag Bal is laughing.  
  
"Indeed. One I shall put to use".  
  
His lips twitching in helpless anger, Angof swats, as hard as he can, at the floating book, as if it were some sort of bloated, blood-engorged bug, knocks it to the ground, and turns to run. To get out of here. To climb down the cliff. To seek out the friends and relatives of those three innocent Bretons, the traveller and his guards, and to beg for their forgiveness.    
  
"I will not be spurned, little man," the ghostly voice rumbles behind his back, while the leaden clouds begin to bleed an acidic green light, which rains down on the vines in the summoning circle, and swathes them in a pulsing glow that mixes with their withered brown and creates a new, murky shade that is almost unbearable to look at without one's throat contracting in a retching spasm.  
  
This vile, disease-like essence seeps deep through the crawling tendrils, making them longer, thicker, thornier... And alive. Slithering like giant fat snakes, creeping closer and closer to Angof, the way a sentient predator would.  
  
"You have been noticed by the Lord of Domination," the aspect goes on. "It is folly to run from the power I shall grant you if you comply - and you will be punished for disobedience wherever you may try to hide. But if you embrace your role, you will be able to wield magic that you never dreamed of. Use a portion of it to settle your petty mortal concerns if you so wish... So long as you do not forget who you really are. My servant".  
  
While the voice was speaking, the cursed tendrils, now measuring more in breadth than a grown man's body, have managed to wrap around a stumbling, cornered Angof's lower legs, and to shoot upwards. So that now, he is dangling upside down, right above the altar; and as the twisting vines have also flipped him around, he is facing the monstrous visage in the clouds again.  
  
The glare of the purple eyes pierces him to the core - and, his heart sinking into the pit of his stomach and stirring painfully somewhere down there, he realizes that the Daedric Prince might have a point.  
  
What good will the knowledge that he resisted temptation do him; what good will regret do him? Or Glenumbra? If he has come this far, sunk this low, then he might as well make use of it. For the greater good.  
  
He is a monster now, the kind of scum only a Daedra would approve of - but so be it. His plan may still work! Maybe this "war" Molag Bal is talking about will actually benefit his people!  
  
And maybe... Maybe the fabled Daedric power will not only change the future of his home - maybe it will also undo what he has done. Bring his victims back.  
  
"If you desire to rule over Glenumbra and revive the dead," the aspect of Molag Bal says in responds to his rushing, hectic thoughts, in a voice that is almost... a purr. "It can be easily arranged".  
  
"Then I shall not run," Angof declares, his eyes hard and prickly like the a frost spell.  
  
The aspect's leer spreads broader and broader, morphing into a long, jagged horizontal lightning bolt, which flashes among the clouds and then dissolves, together with the rest of the ghostly face. Angof is left alone with the vines, which are still tethering him - and with the... the sacrificial heart.  
  
It has changed colour, from natural red to the same shade as the vines, and is rising above its bowl, like the grimoire did, not long before. As it travels through the air, sliding up to Angof, its outlines keep smoothing over, so that instead of a human heart, it begins to resemble... A seed.  
  
A seed that is about to be planted.  
  
Before Angof, numb, gagging, stupefied by the thought of what is about to happen, can make an attempt to struggle in his thorny bonds, to lean away somehow, to as much as blink, the cursed thing lurches forward and burrows into his chest, like he did into the chest of its one-time owner.  
  
Then, someone screams.  
  
Someone that might be him.  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

His third climb, up a blank, barren earth mound in the heart of the Glenumbra Moors, is to survey the fruits of his labours.  
  
Unlike the previous times, he does not feel tired after the journey up the slope - which is mostly because now, he is impervious to any physical impulses save for constant pain.  
  
Lodged into his flesh at the altar of Molag Bal, the Daedric seed has sprouted countless sickly-green vines - smaller versions of the binds restraining him at the time of his transformation.  
  
Some of these vines are slithering under his skin, twitching somewhere at the back of his skull, crawling up his throat, and piercing his innards with blackened thorns that sink much further in than the brambles he'd race through as a child, what was it... centuries, millennia ago? Or just a few decades? If he ever was a child; if he hadn't imagined it all.  
  
And some are visible to the naked eye, having ground their way through marrow and tissue and cloth. They mostly sway drowsily over his shoulders and along his spine, and lash violently when he gets agitated. For they are an inexorable part of his body now; perhaps he is even more vine than man.  
  
What little of him that is not wrapped up in thorny tendrils has withered and rotted and worn almost to the bone, so that he twists tight bandages around his forearms to keep slivers of grey, blotchy, desiccated flesh from falling off, and conceals the lower half of his face beneath a piece of dark wood, carved into a crude makeshift muzzle to protect his bared, brittle cheekbones and jaw, which have but a few scant, sticky threads of skin covering them.  
  
It could be because the vines feed off his essence, with none left to sustain his flesh; or because he actually died on that cliff, and the magic of the seed brought him back to life - just like he has the capacity to bring back the human and meric and beastfolk cattle his followers slaughter for him, digging similar seeds into the moist, soft planting patches of their mortal wounds, and then commanding them to arise as obedient, conveniently mindless thralls, with vines weaving through their bodies.  
  
Curious. There was a time when he would never have called them "cattle". A time when he took mortal like them in if they needed healing, and offered a sympathetic ear when they gave sobbing accounts of their unfair fate.  
  
But that time, that life is long past him now. If he even lived it.  
  
His new name, his new self is Angof the Grave-Singer, a powerful necromancer, duty-bound to conquer Glenumbra for the Reachmen. And Molag Bal. Molag Bal, first and foremost.  
  
He thinks that... When he recovered from the first shock of waking up like... this, and returned to his clan's camp from the summoning site, he did his best not to frighten the lesser weaklings that he had once cared for so much. But for all his pleas, these unworthy mortals - the younger members of his clan, and a handful of Breton refugees - still fled, wild-eyed and tripping over their own feet, terrified of what he had become.  
  
He vaguely recalls reaching after them, crying out frantically,  
  
"Please! Do not be afraid! I will use my gift for the good of Glenumbra!"  
  
But, at the wave of his hands, quite contrary to what he'd expected, or intended, the ground heaved, almost bubbled, under the runaways' soles; and when the bubbles burst, more vines soared upwards, blocking all escape paths and trapping the puny, wriggling mortals in their coils, their thorns puncturing throats and chests and eyes.  
  
It was then, when he looked over what he had wrought, not feeling anything save for the agony of the vines continuing to grow inside him, that he came to understand that the gift of Molag Bal was never to be used to fulfill his original plan. That is was time to remember the words of the stronger, more hardened of his brethren. The words of those who, awestruck as they would be by the emergence of an honoured hagraven, bent their knee to him, while the ruptured soil around them drank in the precious red drops that rained from the vine thorns. The words of those who are now following him uphill, in solemn, black-robed rows, their ranks bolstered by more like-minded Reachmen from other clans, and quite a few wise women (including the very hagraven he stole from, enticed to join him by her form's natural bloodlust); all rallied together under a glorious name that strikes fear in the hearts of the snivelling Bretons and their ilk; a name that honours that moment of Angof's first display of power. The Bloodthorn Cult.  
  
These words, which he has now started chanting to himself, are very much in the spirit of Molag Bal.  
  
"Those who are not kin do not deserve our mercy".  
  
That other Angof, the half-forgotten, half-unreal Angof, the one untouched by the vines, would have considered such logic monstrous. And perhaps it is.  
  
But, well, he _is_ a monster. Monstrous is as monstrous does. And he has done so much that there is no turning back now. Only marching forward, ever forward, until all of Glenumbra is theirs; taking by force what the other Angof so utterly failed to achieve peacefully; and fighting the war Molag Bal wants them to fight.  
  
When he and his faithful cultists reach the mound's top, where once the heath frothed like a sea tide and now nothing living grows, they behold the full scope of change they've brought about in Glenumbra. The deep scar across the plains and highlands - which, unlike the path of trampled grass, might never heal.  
  
As far as eye can see, rising out of slurping marsh water, more vines grow tall and strong - the backbone of magic for building an army of thralls. The air around them is distorted and steeped in a green haze, and all the nearest vegetation is dying, the entire process of its autumnal decay having sped up.  
  
The largest, most valuable vine clusters are guarded by Lurchers - gigantic creatures that used to be Spriggans, the wise women of the forest, eternal guardians of nature moulded out of soft moss and tender bark. Pulled into the web of Angof's magic, these guardians have been reshaped into lumbering, headless wooden carcasses with thick, gnarly limbs and thrumming clots of green essence where their human-like faces used to be.  
  
And deeper in the moorlands, where the tips of the thorny stalks knot together and shape an oppressive dark-green dome, white and grey shadows prowl the wilds, like Angof did when he searched for a human heart. Any careless traveller that stumbles into their hunting grounds is destined to either be shredded into a squelching mass of red, by thrashing paws and razor-sharp teeth, or become one with the shadows, an ever-hungry predator with a vaguely human-like stature and the skin and instincts of a wolf - as well as the power to create other hunters in its likeness, through a magic-touched bite.  
  
Werewolves. Such is the name of the shadows beneath the thorny dome. Albeit their pack is not sworn to Hircine, the patron Daedric Prince of their kind. Like the Bloodthorn Cult, they obey Molag Bal, and it is for the sake of his triumph that they spread the gift of their bite among the prey in the towns and cities of Glenumbra. For their forbearer, the Faolchu of old, a jet-black mountain of a beast that was slain by a Breton hero many ages ago, has been restored to life by Angof's necromancy, and is now yet another useful tool in the arsenal of the God of Schemes.  
  
They have all accomplished much to please their master, and should be rightfully proud and joyful. And yet there is no pride, no joy in the bruised, sunken blue eyes of the Grave-Singer as he gazes upon the marsh. The pain of being host to vicious, carnivorous vines has deprived him of that as well.  
  
But at the same time, something deep, deep inside him, deeper than the longest thorns can reach, tells him that vines have nothing to do with his lack of glee.  



	4. Chapter 4

The fourth climb is made not by him, but by a hero championing the cornered prey of Glenumbra. Not that one would ever think it by looking at her.  
  
Reports brought by the hagravens' crows and Faolchu's wolves, as well as Angof's own scrying spells, reveal the hero as an Orcish woman, unusually small for one of her people, who always wears a flower in her thick black hair and is seen holding hands with people and giving them soothing pats on the back more often than engaging in bloody battle.  
  
And yet, she is the one who hinders so much of his work in Glenumbra. She is the one whom his master would very much like to be "removed".  
  
She is the one who thins the thorny vine barriers, and defends the ancient groves from being drained of life. She is the one who returns small patches of greenery to the poisoned hills and clearings, and walks with the grass lapping against her ankles, the projection of her heart-shaped green face in Angof's divination circles alight with a long-forgotten eagerness and curiosity that makes an inkling of bittersweet longing break through his perpetual pain - before he snarls to himself, his vines writhing, and hastens to put his spell out.  
  
She is the one who steps forth before the prey, and makes the rallying call to take the fight to the werewolves, her slender figure in a sky-blue robe standing out in the crowd of drably dressed peasants like a single ray of light. She is the one who leads the decisive charge that throws the hunters back into the bowels of the marsh, with a spell orb broiling in each hand, one for healing, the other for defending the prey - and when his magic shows this to him, Angof has to extinguish it again, startled by the thought that at this rate, he may actually begin to... admire her.  
  
She is the one who crosses rocky gorges and treks tirelessly up rugged mountainsides, and lifts herself onto the branches of the tallest trees, never losing focus on what she apparently wants to find. A path towards the Bloodthorn Cult's main camp, where the Grave-Singer awaits. Watching, unbeknownst to her, how she topples his master's plans at every turn; hatching schemes to make her answer for her meddling... And - by Lord Bal, don't let the cult know! - a bit too eager to finally meet her in person.  
  
And this relentless, determined climb of hers does culminate with them coming face to face. Glenumbra's bane and saviour (and he does not care to clarify who is who), striding towards each other, the air around them thin and charged with pent-up spell energy.  
  
She has pretty eyes, he suddenly thinks to himself, as she dodges the first onslaught of the crawling poisonous tendrils he has pulled from underground, and steps back to try and target him with a crystalline magical projectile.  
  
Very pretty. Deep-grey, like molten silver. His scrying has often shown them glimmer with tearful compassion, as she leaned over a maimed Spriggan, or a wheezing, delirious man about to succumb to the bite of a werewolf. But, of course, she will have no compassion for him - nor is it his place to expect any, not after becoming... what he is. His place is to continue doing the only thing he is good for. Serving Molag Bal.  
  
And so he does. For Molag Bal, he fights, deflecting the little Orc's spells - so that she barely has time to slink into the see-through shell of a barrier before her own crystals turn her into a pincushion - and summoning more and more vines to try and constrict her movements. And for Molag Bal, he falls, stricken down by the Orc's lightning bolt just as he has to fall back, drained of magicka.  
  
By now, he has long been on his own against the silver-eyed hero, her searing shock charges having thinned the ranks of cultists that may have defended him. A solitary target for her to hit.  
  
One target, one spell, one fleeting second before he glances dully at his chest and discovers that it has been branded with a sticky charred circle - and that the vines have finally wilted.  
  
For a few blissful moments, the pain releases him, and he is enveloped in downy bluish fog, almost as if he is back in the grove near his clan's camp, in an untainted human body, and the cursed grimoire is yet to be read.  
  
Somewhere beyond that grove, muffled and distant, a voice whispers - a voice that might be his,  
  
"Thank you".  
  
And, a split second before the fog darkens from blue to black, he catches a glimpse of a startled heart-shaped face, and a small green hand, taking a flower out of a frizzy hair bun and laying it down on his chest, and a pair of silvery eyes, glimmering with tearful compassion.  
  
  
  


 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

It would have been a fitting end for him - but it's not. It is merely a prelude to another climb.  
  
His rest in the soothing blackness, without sight or sound or pain, seems to last less than a minute; he is awoken by the lash of a flaming whip, wielded by a Dremora - one of the most human-like, and thus most intelligent and cruel, varieties of lesser Daedra commanded by the Princes. Razor-like teeth gnashing, whiteless eyes alight with malice, this enormous horned warrior in ebony armour with patterns of pulsing, blood-like red, rains more and more whip strikes upon Angof, while dragging him up the side of a craggy, oddly purplish cliff. The fiery lashes eat through his vines - which are coiling and biting at him again, as if nothing happened - and through his withered flesh, adding up to the agony that he is in already; but a few seconds after each hit, the angry blisters smooth over, and the vines shoot out fresh new sprouts.  
  
As the tendrils under his skin lurch violently, Angof realizes that they will keep growing back for all eternity, and hears his new name whispered to him in the cold wind that blows over the cliff, like when he first summoned Molag Bal.  
  
Angof the Undying.  
  
Step by step, whip lash by whip lash, they get to the top, and a dizzying view over a desolate plain, shaded the same purple as the sharp triangular rocks they've just climbed, opens at their feet. This landscape looks eerie, dream-like, with none of the colours Angof was used to seeing back in... In the mortal realm.  
  
Slowing down, the Dremora explains to him (with a few extra whip lashes to mark punctuation) that this place is called the Cliffs of Failure. Lost in the boundless dreary badlands of Coldharbour, Molag Bal's kingdom in Oblivion, where all life is choked by cold purple sand and the sunless sky weeps with unmelting snow, the Cliffs serve as a prison for those of the Prince's followers who died before they could complete their work in his name.  
  
"By allowing yourself to be defeated," the Dremora explains, long black tongue darting between its fangs, as it watches Angof sink to one knee under its whip, "You have shown weakness, and insulted my Lord. Thus he has revived you in Coldharbour, so that you might earn forgiveness by amusing him".  
  
His vines engulfed in flame, Angof looks up at his tormentor, his blue eyes brighter than the whip's orange haze.  
  
So he is being offered another deal, is he? Instead of being released into the embrace of darkness, he is expected to grovel at Molag Bal's feet and beg for another chance to sow death wherever he turns?  
  
It is after these thoughts, and not the climb he has just endured, that he begins to feel immeasurably tired. Serving his master may have been the only thing he was good for in life… But he just cannot stand doing it all over again.  
  
"What if I refuse?" he asks quietly. "What if I do not wish to amuse Molag Bal?"  
  
"Your wishes matter not, mortal," the Dremora shrugs lazily. "My Lord has devised a game for the likes of you, and he shall see you play it".  
  
That "game", as Angof soon learns - when the Dremora finally grows weary of beating him and shoves him inside a thick-barred, circular cage on the clifftop that is to be his "home" - involves the disgraced servants of Molag Bal measuring their wit in a morbid likeness of chess. With the cracked purple plains beneath them serving as the board, and the pawns being taken from the number of mortal prisoners "harvested" by the Dremora. The pawns are the ones that have to kill each other, with bonus points being given for slowness and unusual murder weapons, while their players watch from above and give them instructions. Whoever explores the entire plain with the minimal loss of pawns, wins a dubious reward - an "inclination towards forgiveness" from Molag Bal.  
  
These are the basic rules. "The rest," the Dremora informs Angof gleefully, before it vanishes in a cloud of coal-black smoke (presumably setting out to do its "harvesting"), "Is subject to change. A lot of change. Every few minutes. To spice things up".  
  
After being left to contemplate his pastime for the next few millennia, Angof scans his surroundings with a tired, listless gaze - and sees that there are other cages positioned next to his, containing two more trapped chess players... Who, for some reason, assume that he is longing to hear them introduce themselves.  
  
One is Estre, the ringleader of a group of High Elven conspirators that wanted to overthrow their queen for "sullying the nation" by an alliance with the "inferior" Wood Elves and catfolk of Elsweyr. As she explains it, jewelled earrings jangling when she throws her head up haughtily, her noble house used to worship Mehrunes Dagon, the Daedric Prince of destruction, revolution and change, but she turned to Molag Bal as he promised her more power. And she would have basked in that power, had it not been for "that insolent curly boy" of her own kin, who disagreed with her on racial supremacy, and expressed that by stabbing her through the gut.  
  
The other is a grim-faced Nord necromancer named Thallik, sent here after a fire-slinging duel with a one-eyed Dark Elf. The man is notable for a carefully groomed black beard the size of a spade - and frankly, not much else.  
  
He talks a lot about his "genius experiments", intended to resurrect some ancient giant and make him rampage through the countryside in the northern kingdom of Skyrim, and bickers with Estre over whose knowledge of dark magic is more impressive... But somewhere in the middle of it all, Angof stops listening.  
  
Turning his back to the other two captives, he rests his back against the bars of his cage, as if against the trunk of a tree in that faraway grove, and gazes out into the purple emptiness. Soon, the Dremora will return with the pawns - some poor, rake-thin peasants snatched from their plough, or weeping freckled maidens, or apprentice mages way in over their head - and it will all begin anew. More flesh ripped apart to make a skull-like face crack a ravenous grin; more lives laid down on a blood-streaked altar.  
  
It should not bother him; it should come naturally, joyfully, like it did when his vines strangled Glenumbra. Although... Did it?  
  
He accepted being a monster, but never revelled in it, not even when he walked the mortal plane in this cursed body. And now, as he presses his masked face against the metal bars, at the peak of yet another climb charting his life - his unlife - all that he hopes for, with as much fervour as he can make room for amid all the pain that keeps devouring him, is that, once the pawns are sucked into this wretched place, they will be found by someone... Someone like his younger, other self, or like that silver-eyed Orc that killed him and then mourned him; someone who will heal them, and shelter them, and tell them that everything is going to be all right.  
  
Do all the things that he himself no longer deserves.  
  
  



	6. Chapter 6

Slumped inside a cage over the purple desert, with the snowy gusts swooshing over his head, he never would have thought that he would journey anywhere beyond the Cliffs of Failure; he never would have foreseen a new climb... And yet, here he is. Making his next ascent, this time with no Dremora looming over him, and no sacrificial altar awaiting at the top.  
  
This path leads up the stairs to the doorway of a stately white temple building, with narrow windows that shine with dappled stained-glass light, like soul gem reflections in the hagraven's cave, but with warmer, fresher colours.  
  
Yes, the mention of a church must make it sound like he is some sort of repentant sinner, finally doing that "earning forgiveness" thing that affronted him so much on the Cliffs. But he is not here to pray - he is long past all forgiveness, and by now, he knows better than to pour his heart out to any more god-like beings. He is here because, when he lowers himself on the top step at the temple's entrance and looks ahead, he can see the whole city, washed over by a stream of pinkish light.  
  
He is still in Coldharbour, still far from the mortal plane - but this corner of the wasteland has been shielded from Molag Bal's all-seeing eyes by protective magic, and the city is safe enough for the people who have managed to flee from the Daedra to build a new life for themselves in the shade of its towers, which rise on the skyline like the gateways of Daggerfall rose beyond Glenumbra's hills.  
  
Blue eyes dimming over, grey hands clasped in his lap, Angof takes in the ethereal, pink-tinted cityscape, and his skeletal jaws part a little under his mask, with the scant remnants of skin that frames them stretching into a... somewhat smile-like something, whenever he catches sight of the three little robed figures scurrying to and fro, scrolls under their arms. A rosy-cheeked Breton girl, a lanky and shy young Dark Elf, and a slightly chubby catboy with sleek short grey fur. Three apprentices from the Mages Guild that lost their way in Coldharbour and were turned into pawns for that sick chess match.  
  
He is very pleased - far more so than he even thought himself capable of - that they are alive and well and cared for in this safe haven. These hapless children would have had to claw each other's hearts out, to secure victory for either Estre, Thallik, or himself - but they were rescued. Just like he had hoped. And by none other than... The hero of Glenumbra. The willowy Orc with a new flower in her hair, to replace the one she honoured Angof's death with, and silvery eyes that glowed with recognition when she faced him for a second time.  
  
"I have travelled here to look for the apprentices," she told him resolutely, gripping at the bars of his cage and giving him a steady, intent look. "But I will take you with me as well. I remember what you said before you... faded. These powers you have, they make you suffer, don't they? It can't have been what you wanted!"  
  
Ah, what he wanted. There used to be a time, eons ago, when he thought he had a clear picture of that, all neatly outlined in his mind, and that no Daedric trickery was going to make him veer off course.  
  
"I think... I think I may have wanted to end the corruption in Glenumbra," he replied falteringly, as holding her gaze suddenly made him feel weak. "But I made mistakes. I... became a monster. A creature that does not deserve compassion. If you came here to set someone free... Please, do so with the apprentices, and them alone".  
  
But she refused to listen - and stayed true to her initial promise, turning into a tiny whirlwind of enchanted blades and explosive spellcraft, and cleaving through the hordes of beasts the outraged Dremora overseer threw at her. Until eventually, the creature had to cave, muttering that at least there were two more players, and plenty of other mortals to harvest.  
  
The Orc responded to the latter bit by a stern frown that glaringly stated "Not if I can help it" - and took both the shaken, half-stunned mage children and the quietly incredulous Angof to the hidden city. In its brightly lit streets, and in the curious stone-walled dwellings of the kind the Reachmen would tell their children tall tales about, preparations are underway for an ambitious mission to weaken Molag Bal and put an end to that war he keeps waging back on the mortal plane.  
  
The silver-eyed hero - Durgakh, they call her; Durgakh the Elf-Like, as reference to her slim stature - is in the thick of it. She never sits idly, rushing off to join the resident mages' debate on vanquishing Daedra, and trotting back and forth with the supplies for crafting new armour for the eager warriors, and foraying into the greater Coldharbour to shepherd more rescued prisoners of Molag Bal. And in between all of this, she somehow finds the time to check on the lone monster that watches the city life go by at the top of the temple stairs.  
  
And the moment he sees her approach, waving vigorously at him, that semi-smile beneath his mask inevitably grows even broader than when he spots the young mages.  
  
"The view here is beautiful," she always says, as she sits down next to Angof - who instinctively shrinks away, fearing that the aura of his vines might poison her, like it poisoned the green woods of Glenumbra.  
  
"It reminds me of the time when things were... better," he murmurs, casting down his gaze.  
  
"Things can still be good again," she objects softly; and as he looks up, and the deep silver eyes meet the pale blue, Angof feels weak again, so petrified that even his vines seem to slow down their perpetual crawl, and hurt him less.  
  
"Once the war is over, you can return home. We have portals set up, for bringing in reinforcements from the mortal world - but they work in the other direction too. And oh... Maybe, after we deal with this Daedric plot, we'll find a way to break your curse?"  
  
Break his curse. Now, would that not be the ideal way to bring his tale to a close? To round up the pattern by shedding these thorny sprouts and this rancid skin; by slipping back into the guise of a Reachman healer; by finishing his series of arduous climbs with one last trek up that hill from his childhood. And by looking at Daggerfall again, and weaving the pure, golden restorative magic like he used to do, helping Glenumbra and its people close the wounds he himself inflicted. It would not miraculously change the Bretons' way of thinking, of course - he now doubts that such magic even exists outside of repugnant Daedric rituals - but it would bring them some solace. And it would be the least he could do to fix his mistakes - not to butter up a deity, or to whine for forgiveness, but simply because it's right.  
  
And perhaps... Perhaps that finishing climb could be made not by him on his own, but in the company of the silver-eyed maiden in a sky-blue robe, with not one flower in her hair but a whole vibrant crown, which he would make for her, with the hands that would not be just half-bared bones threatening to poke out of slippery chunks of diseased flesh; with the hands that could brush over her skin and weave through her hair without tainting her or draining her life away. Perhaps, as they walked side by side, she would give him a new name. Not "Undying", not "Grave-Singer" - but "Mine"...  
  
No. That will be taking this too far. The very notion of him, a vessel for Molag Bal's dark magic, being... in love with the woman who had to put him down like a rabid dog, and dreaming of her helping him turn into a human, like some fairytale princess... That is absurd!  
  
None of this will happen. The pattern of his climbs will not end like this.  
  
But it seems that Durgakh has this bizarre power over him: once, she killed his physical self - and now, she is killing his last smatterings of reason. His ability to remind himself that he will never be getting any of this.  
  
Not a creature like him. Not a hideous, disgusting monstrosity with hands soaked in the blood of the innocents. No. Never.  
  
Never.


End file.
